The Ghosts Of Gods And The Shadows Of Stars
by Unoriginality
Summary: Bucky encounters the past in the New York City library, in the form of an odd old man. (UFC- unidentified fandom cameo; A BTWWL fic.)


Bucky loved his tablet. He could get virtually any book on it without having to crowd his bookshelves that were rapidly being taken up by art books and chemistry texts, or without having to have a library card and tromp out into the late February cold to get to the library.

But Steve loved the library, and not every book out there was available for download onto a tablet. Bucky'd gone through the texts that Steve had gotten him for Christmas, and the internet wasn't supplying much more than he'd already seen. So when Steve suggested they stop by the famous New York City Library, Bucky decided to brave the cold slush outside and said he'd tag along. He wanted to see what he could find on the chemical sciences there.

The library was massive, full of far more books than what it'd had back in his day. He'd only gone once back then, thought it was impossible for a single building to hold more books than it did, but the place had proven him wrong in the decades after. Once there, Steve and Bucky parted ways, Steve to the fiction section and Bucky to the sciences sections.

He was browsing the chemistry books, metal finger sliding over book spines until his hand clinked against someone else's; he realized with a start that the hand in question was also metal, a darker shade of steel compared to the brighter compound Bucky's hand was made of, and the fingers and knuckles were a design that looked far older and not as efficient as Bucky's.

His hand remained frozen in place as he looked past his shoulder to see an old man, hair gone white, long and in a pony tail. The old man had startling gold eyes- gold! That wasn't a real eye color, was it? Maybe they were merely a light brown, but either way, there was something odd about them, something that made Bucky feel very young all of a sudden.

"Sorry," Bucky said, lowering his arm. "Didn't mean to run into you."

The man adjusted his eye glasses. "Not at all," he said, a very faint British accent in his tone, like maybe he'd immigrated some years back and had never fully lost the accent to the American one he was surrounded by. "I was doing the same thing." He looked up at the book their hands had crashed into each other by. "That's a good one. Very up to date." He took the book down and handed it over to Bucky. "You must be Mister Barnes."

Bucky took the book, still not sure what was so captivating about the old man. It was vaguely like looking at a shadow of a star, and that was silly. What a thing to think. His brain had better not have decided to find a new fetish.

He looked down at the book, eyeing the publication date. Published August of the previous year, not long before Tony and Pepper had visited Steve and Bucky in DC. Hard to find something published outside of academia more up to date than that. "Thanks," he said, looking back up. "Yeah, I'm Barnes. You?"

The man smiled. "Just call me Ed." He held out his right hand.

Bucky eyed it for a moment before taking it. "Interesting design. Where'd you get it?"

Ed studied his hand a moment. "An old friend of mine built it for me. I sometimes still miss her."

"What happened? Did you lose it in a war?"

A strange sort of smile crossed Ed's lips. "If we wish to talk, perhaps we would be better sitting down. Or I can leave you to your browsing."

Bucky suddenly very much wanted to keep talking to Ed. "We can go sit down. There's some tables right over there," he said, motioning behind him.

That smile on Ed's face changed to a more normal smile, a stranger meeting a stranger and deciding to have a chat instead of wandering away like most New Yorkers would do. "Lead on then, Mister Barnes."

"James," Bucky said. "Call me James." He made sure Ed was still with him, wasn't going to evaporate like a cloud of condensation on a cold winter morning. But the old man stayed with him, followed him to a table and took a seat. Bucky took a seat across from him, setting the book down to be forgotten next to him. "So what happened?"

Ed sat back with an amused smile on his face. "Accident in my father's lab when I was young. He was a biologist, of sorts."

Bucky glanced at the chemistry book that they'd collided over. "And you're a chemist?"

"Biochemist, actually," Ed said. "The apple didn't fall as far from the tree that I would'ved liked at one time. Now I can only hope to be as good of a man as my father ended up being in his twilight years. He looked after me until the Nazis attempted their Putsch in Munich."

Bucky did some quick math in his head. If Ed was alive in 1923, that'd make him at least ninety-three, not much younger than Bucky himself. And Bucky had a feeling that number might be a bit higher, if Ed was old enough to remember his father taking care of him that year. "You look awfully good for a guy in his nineties," he said.

Ed looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. "Longevity and good aging run in the genes, you could say. I was eighteen that year."

"Now I know you're bullshitting," Bucky said. "You'd have to be a hundred and eleven for that to be true."

Ed tilted his head, looking at Bucky and again those eyes suddenly made Bucky feel very young by comparison to this strange old man he'd started talking to for some reason he couldn't fathom. "Are you saying it's impossible? A super soldier who died and was resurrected?"

Bucky drew his head back. "Resurrected? Hell of an odd way to put it."

"I'm an odd sort," Ed said. "If I should be dead by now, so should you and your friend, the captain. Sometimes life likes to give us unusual gifts that aren't always the nicest of gifts. I long since outlived my family, and there were no children from my brother or I to be with now. So I'm here to be in the company of my books." He paused. "Excuse me, the public's books. I just borrow them."

"You had a brother?" he asked, finding himself compelled to find out more about this weird old guy.

Something sad settled in Ed's eyes and on his lips. "A younger one, separated by one year. We never were far apart. Fought like hell over everything, but that was just part of our relationship. We'd die and kill for each other." He grew silent, and Bucky waited patiently for him to continue, hoping he would. "We got out of Germany the year Hitler took over, right after the Reichstag fire. We saw that one coming and got the hell out while the getting was good. Settled in Britain for awhile. We'd been a long way from home in Germany."

"Why'd you go to Germany in the first place?"

"Following my father and my job. I went into the rocketry field. Oberth's work fascinated me, so I toddled off to see what kind of a mess of things I could make." He looked amused at himself. "Made enough of a mess that some of my work with the fuels put man on the moon." He looked at the book on the table between them. "What about you? A mercenary who likes chemistry?"

Bucky stared at the book, almost not comprehending its presence, before he grabbed it and pulled it close to him. "I was a chemical engineer before the war," he said. "Trying to get back into it. Steve says I need another hobby besides finding horrible things on the internet to traumatize him with."

Ed smiled, a broad grin that spoke of a true ornery older brother. "Have you told him that it's your sacred duty as his big brother to do that?"

"A few times, but he just tries to fling his drawing pencil at my head for it," Bucky said, wanting to laugh, but out of respect for the other library patrons, refrained. "Decides at the last minute that he doesn't want to waste one on me." Then something sank in and he frowned. "How'd you know that I call Steve my brother?"

"I'd be blind not to," Ed said. "It was obvious in the old news reels, watching them as a younger man. You two reminded me a lot of Al and myself."

"Al, he was your brother?"

"Mm." Ed heaved a sigh. "He passed on some years back. Now I just haunt this dusty old place in the hopes of finding a friend."

Bucky heard something indescribably lonely in those words, and he had to beat back the fear that he might one day find himself doing the same, if Steve wasn't careful on a mission, or if Hydra managed to get him. "You ever find one?"

"Just the books," Ed said. "Occasionally someone like you will stop to talk to me, but it never lasts." He looked over his shoulder as if hearing something that Bucky wasn't. Then he pulled out a pocketwatch and studied the time. "Speaking of the books, I think it's time I let you get back to yours. Your friend might be ready to go check out." He got up and started to walk away.

"Hey," Bucky called after him. When Ed stopped and looked back, Bucky frowned, wondering why he'd stopped him. Ed was right, it was time they parted ways. "You got a last name?"

Ed smiled, an old sort of smile that held worlds of knowledge. "Once upon a time I did." Then he disappeared into the shelves of books.

Bucky didn't chase after him, remained seated at the table, staring at the aisle that Ed had wandered down. Weirdest encounter he'd ever had, and now that the old man was no longer there, that strange spell that had compelled Bucky to give up on the books to talk to the old man was gone. Bucky wondered what the hell had just happened.

"Hey, you ready to go?" Steve asked, and Bucky jumped, wondered when he'd gotten there. Steve had a handful of books under his arm, a few mysteries that all started with the words "the cat who" as their titles.

Bucky looked at his lone book. He was almost afraid to go look for more, that he'd get sidetracked again by another weirdo. Deciding it wasn't worth the risk, he grabbed his text. "Yeah."

"Just one book?" Steve asked, eyeing it.

"For now," Bucky said, not quite willing to explain that he'd just spent all his browsing time talking to some old guy with a metal arm who claimed to be over a hundred, despite not looking older than seventy, maybe eighty.

They checked out and went home.

Bucky worked through the text, taking careful notes in his notebook, but he sometimes found himself distracted, trying to figure out exactly what that encounter had been all about.

It took him three days to get through the text. Steve had blown through his 'cat who' books that quickly, fiction that he didn't have to take notes on a quicker read than what Bucky was working on.

The third day, they returned to the library.

While Steve wandered off to find more books- apparently the 'cat who' books were an entire series and now Steve was determined to find them all to read them -Bucky stopped at the counter. "Excuse me," he said to the librarians sitting behind the desk.

There were two women there, one who looked in her fifties, and a younger one that looked about Bucky's biological age, with pretty brown eyes and dark hair that vaguely reminded him of Peggy. The younger one answered. "Can I help you?"

"Maybe," he said. "There's a guy who claims to be a regular, old guy, really old, long hair. Do you know who he is?"

The two women looked at each other. "There's a few older gentlemen with long hair around here," the elder one said, giving him an amused look.

Bucky flushed. "I'd say he had a metal arm, but that might not be descriptive either."

There was another exchange of looks, this time accompanied by sad smiles. "You must mean Ed," the younger woman said. "Yes, you could say he's a regular. Everyone's seen him at one point or another."

Bucky held up his book. "He was looking at this book when I snatched it. Do you know how to contact him to let him know that it's available for him again?"

"Oh dear," the older woman said. "Ed can't be contacted unless he wants to be. He's a ghost story, Mister Barnes. Our records show that his library card was canceled upon his death thirty years ago."

Bucky felt something drop into his stomach. "A ghost story? You sure about that? I used to be one, too."

The younger one smiled, leaning forward. "You're a lot better looking of a ghost," she said, "but no, I can promise you, old Ed is the library's resident ghost. He's nicer than the ones from Ghostbusters, isn't he?"

Bucky normally would've taken the compliment and perhaps even had run with it, flirting back, but the words the librarians were saying had taken hold of his brain. "I suppose an almost century old super soldier really shouldn't be saying there's no such thing as ghosts, huh?"

The older woman shook her head. "No, honey, probably not. Were you done with that book? We can check it in and get it back on the shelves for Ed."

Bucky nodded, handing the book over almost as an afterthought. "Did he have a last name?"

While the younger librarian scanned the book, the older one shrugged. "Once upon a time. The records glitched for some reason, we don't have access to his full name anymore. Just that he's Ed."

Once upon a time.

"Thank you," Bucky said, slowly turning away from the desk and heading towards a table to wait for Steve. Something cold had settled in his chest, a brush with something he couldn't understand. The past had decided to sit down with him and talk, and then disappeared as if it'd never been there at all.

Bucky sat down at a table and waited for Steve.


End file.
